Biography

﻿Gillian Rae-Walker was born in Edinburgh and took a degree in music, German and French at the University of St. Andrews, before going on to the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart, where she studied singing and piano as an undergraduate and opera as a post-graduate. She continued her studies at Morley Opera and Abbey Opera, with coaching at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and in masterclasses in Lucerne, Glyndbourne and Oxenfoord. An early teacher was Elisabeth Grümmer, followed by Ryland Davies and Esther Salaman and at present she works with Cathy Pope.

Gillian Rae-Walker’s career spans both opera and concert work. Her stage career began with the Ludwigsburg Festival production of Semele, produced by Marco Arturo Marelli and broadcast on German national TV, continuing nearer home with companies such as Opera East, St. Leonard’s Opera, Regency Opera, Surrey Opera,the Pocket Opera Company as well as various festivals in such roles asHigh Priestess, First Lady, Gilda,Musetta and Antonia.Gillian Rae-Walker has also sung to considerable acclaim on the concert platform, both at home and abroad. This has included a series of London recitals with Peter Fisher, violin, as well as solo recitals, focussing on French song, Handel, Mozart and Puccini. She has appeared as guest soloist with many choral societies and with ensembles such as the Stuttgart Opera Orchestra andthe Chamber Ensemble of London, as well as at the European Festival of Church Music in Germany, where she recently performed Schmidt’s Buch mit Sieben Siegeln to critical acclaim, the Südwestpresse writing that she sang with “captivating lyricism”.

A selection of her concert engagements includes Verdi’s Requiem at Exeter Cathedral and Malvern Theatres, Handel’s Messiah at Huddersfield Town Hall and the Music Hall, Aberdeen and other venues, Dvorak's Stabat Mater at Lichfield Cathedral, Vaughan Williams’s Sea Symphony at the Central Halls, Edinburgh and the Younger Hall, St. Andrews, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis at Perth City Hall, Fanshawe’s African Sanctus at Wakefield Cathedral, Handel’s Judas Maccabeus at St. Paul’s Knightsbridge, Respighi’s Lauda Per La Nativita delSignore at York Minster, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio in Cardiff, Orff’s CarminaBurana in Grimsby, Britten’s On This Island in Glasgow, regular appearances as guest soloist at St. James’s Piccadilly andSt. Martin-in-the-Fields featuring Mozart, Handel, Purcell and Vivaldi with the Chamber Ensemble of London and Strauss’s Four Last Songs in Stuttgart with piano as well as in York withYork Symphony Orchestra.